Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Jewish culture. Here, you’ll learn about the latest (and sometimes earliest) in Jewish art, music, film, theater, books as well as the secret Jewish history of everything and everyone from The Rolling Stones to…
Culture
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How my odious cousin Roy Cohn was responsible for creating Donald Trump — and me
For this author, 'The Apprentice' is a chillingly accurate film that hits way too close to home
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HomeLands: Nesting in Nashville
In this inaugural feature, the Forward interviewed Rabbi Aaron Finkelstein, 31, and his wife, Julie Sugar, 30, at their home in Nashville, Tennessee. They moved there from New York so that Aaron could work at Congregation Sherith Israel and the Akiva School. Julie is a scriptwriter for an educational online program called YiddishPOP and also…
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Music At 50, Israel Museum Looks to Local Artists
Mira Lapidot, 44, has risen through the ranks of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, starting her career 16 years ago as a guide and, in the past three years, serving as chief curator of the fine arts wing. Yet at that moment of personal achievement she and her team were already planning what they knew…
The Latest
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Chilly Scenes of Cleveland Synagogues
● Congregation By Raphael Silver AuthorHouse, 412 pages, $23.95 Over the course of his 83 years, Raphael Silver was many things: real estate developer; film producer, director, writer and distributor; climber of Mount Kilimanjaro at age 73; indefatigable collector of objects; and finally, at the end of his life, author of a novel, “Congregation.” Silver…
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10 Things About (Jewish) Arizona
1) 106,300 Jews live in Arizona. 2) Arizona’s first known Jewish resident was Dr. Herman Bendell who, in 1870, was nominated to be the state’s first Superintendent of Indian Affairs. 3) Since there were few women in the Arizona territory, early Jewish settlers traveled elsewhere to find wives. In 1884, 21 of these brides founded…
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Fear, Trembling and Madness After Bibi’s Re-Election
I’m in Tel Aviv. I love Tel Aviv. Who doesn’t? I’m in a boutique hotel on Gordon Street, facing the Gordon Beach, and I’m ready for breakfast. “What would you like to order?” asks the waiter. I like the waiters at this hotel. They are young and handsome, they look intellectual, and all of them…
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The Art of Laurie Simmons Directly Challenges the Viewer
First I notice each model’s eyebrows. They are fluffy and coiffed into perfect, thick, modern arches as if ripped from this month’s glossy fashion magazines. And then below, eyes with wide-open pupils stare intensely at nothing, as if I don’t exist. I feel my reality challenged. And even more so since the eyes themselves are…
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Daniel Weiss Calls Metropolitan Museum Job Running the ‘Yankees’ of Art
Visiting the Memorial de Caen museum in Normandy, France, in 1996, Daniel Weiss was captivated by eight photographs showing the public hanging of three partisans in Minsk, Belarus, on Oct. 26, 1941. The two male victims’ identities were known, but the female was anonymous, and Weiss set out to learn who she was. By the…
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Anatomy of the Murderers
● The Third Reich in History and Memory By Richard J. Evans Oxford University Press, 496 pages, $29.95 However deranged his deeds, Adolf Hitler was not certifiably mad. The German people did not voluntarily embrace the dictator, but acquiesced in his rule only after a campaign of terror that silenced or sidelined the political opposition….
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Cut and Paste Your Ancestors
In need of Jewish ancestors? Liana Finck has some for you — just cut out and display! CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE
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‘Felix and Meira’ Reaches Into a Cloistered World — and Beyond
Five years ago, at the Sunshine Cinema in Manhattan, I saw the worst movie about Hasidim ever made. “Holy Rollers,” a tale of Brooklyn boychiks gone bad, starred Jesse Eisenberg as Sam Gold, an innocent young thing who gets sucked into the ecstasy smuggling business. The plot was based on a true story, but the…
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Music Stanford Student Slams ‘Anti-Semitic’ Question About Jewish Faith
(j weekly via JTA) — A junior at Stanford University who is running for the student senate says she faced anti-Semitic questioning from a student group whose endorsement she was seeking. During a March 13 interview in front of eight members of the university’s Students of Color Coalition, Molly Horwitz, 21, alleges that the lead interviewer…
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Opinion I’m a Jew of color. Ta-Nehisi Coates can’t apply U.S. lessons to Israel
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Culture How my odious cousin Roy Cohn was responsible for creating Donald Trump — and me
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Fast Forward Was the viral Ta-Nehisi Coates interview a hit piece or fair play? A journalism ethics expert weighs in.
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Sports 5 Jewish things about the Mets — and why Jewish fans adore them
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Fast Forward US to send troops to Israel as Hezbollah ramps up its attack
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Fast Forward On tour in South America, Paul McCartney attends Yom Kippur services in Santiago, Chile
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Fast Forward Historic Prague synagogue used on Yom Kippur for the first time since the Holocaust
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